Posted on 02/01/2013 1:34:53 AM PST by Mad Dawgg
This is a test... OK it is a challenge. I know there are multitudes of smart people who lurk and post here on FR. Well I've been dabbling in Ciphers and Codes.
Why? Because a number of years back someone gave me the Cryptonomicon as a gift. It is a novel by Neal Stephenson. The story is hilarious yet based on actual historic fact. Places like Bletchley Park and people like Alan Turing loom large in the novel. If you are not familiar with the name or place it was where England broke the Enigma Code of the Germans in World War 2.
Anyhow after I read the book several times I got the cipher bug and have been messing around with them to see if I could make a simple cipher/code that is hard to break.
So you will hopefully find below my first public attempt. Have at it!
Good luck!
this may or may not help.
as i was putting it together, i realized it could be more then a simple key-based cipher. it would be interesting if the patterns were each a stage in an image series from nothing to a built image, each one denoting a number. the result being a key set used to decipher into 32 symbols, which together are 5 bits... when combined and parsed into 8 bit blocks would result in ascii (or some other dictionary set)
i'm pretty sure the OP didn't do this, but it would be a cool code. :)
Bletchley Park Tour [documentary in full]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuEHcJ7CCzg
This is a video made by someone who works at Bletchley.
I did a letter substitution and got this:
abcdef gbadah djcckd lmndpc ledleq rdrbls sdmhad pcdfmt ufmgcn
(parsed into 6 letter “words”)
A dictionary attack on a reverse substitution (a for z, b for y, etc.) gave me the word “reward” spelled backwards and the word “there” or “where”.
Still puzzling......
I thought of Abe Slaney and the Dancing Men as well.
It’s hard to break even a simple code when there is no real payoff and not a large enough collection of encrypted samples.
The reason Enigma was broken is a combination of brilliant code breakers and a really stupid error in Enigma’s design.
The flaw is the fact that no character would ever be encoded as itself. i.e. A in plain text would never be A in the encoded text... This was a really dumb mistake :-) Just the sort of thing a genius like Turing could use to crack the system.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2_Q9FoD-oQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4V2bpZlqx8
Same here.
the 3rd and 4th symbols are the most frequently used, followed by 1, 11, and 12.
frequency count:
| numeric | alpha | frequency |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | a | 4 |
| 2 | b | 3 |
| 3 | c | 6 |
| 4 | d | 10 |
| 5 | e | 3 |
| 6 | f | 3 |
| 7 | g | 2 |
| 8 | h | 2 |
| 9 | j | 1 |
| 10 | k | 2 |
| 11 | l | 4 |
| 12 | m | 4 |
| 13 | n | 2 |
| 14 | p | 2 |
| 15 | q | 1 |
| 16 | r | 2 |
| 17 | s | 2 |
| 18 | t | 1 |
btw, what happened to 'i' and 'o' in your key?
I regularly skip those to avoid confusion with numbers (an old algebra habit). And I usually use cursive for variables, hence the “l”.
/old fogey mode
Yes the breaks are arbitrary (based on the original line count). I’ve been playing with different blocks (even considering one the of the characters might be a “space”).
I like your idea of a kind of pictorial ascii code - would be cool.
Is this that carrier pigeon message from WW II again?
“The German tanks are closing in! We are out of ammo! Having a wonderful time here in France and wish you were here. Corporal Smithers”
Ah yes! Good ol’ Sherlock’s dancing men!
“Watson, bring your revolver!”
How dare you use that language in front of my wife, you churlish cad!
LOL!!
I have deposited in the county of Bedford, about four miles from Buford’s, in an excavation or vault, six feet below the surface of the ground, the following articles, belonging jointly to the parties whose names are given in number three, herewith: The first deposit consisted of ten hundred and fourteen pounds of gold, and thirty-eight hundred and twelve pounds of silver, deposited Nov. eighteen nineteen. The second was made Dec. eighteen twenty-one, and consisted of nineteen hundred and seven pounds of gold, and twelve hundred and eighty-eight of silver; also jewels, obtained in St. Louis in exchange for silver to save transportation, and valued at thirteen thousand dollars. The above is securely packed in iron pots, with iron covers. The vault is roughly lined with stone, and the vessels rest on solid stone, and are covered with others. Paper number one describes the exact locality of the vault, so that no difficulty will be had in finding it.
I guess I need to buy a much larger monitor.
It breaks: “America cannot compete with China, all your factories belong to us.”
I was thinking the characters were distinguished by a count of the blocks in a corner or corner and end position, or a total count (with a -5 or so adjustment)
But don’t have time to go further...
I like it
“What one man can invent another can discover.”
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